Tag Archives: Speech

Clinton shell corporation “WJC, LLC” allowed non-disclosure of speaking fee revenue amounts

Hillary Clinton: secretive, entitled, hypocritical
Hillary Clinton: secretive, entitled, hypocritical

This is from James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal.

First, about the “pass-through” / “shell” corporation:

If the Clintons had any wit, they’d have called it Everyday Americans LLC. The Associated Press reports that last week’s financial disclosures by inevitable Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton “omit a company with no apparent employees or assets that the former president [the candidate’s husband] has legally used to provide consulting and other services, but which demonstrates the complexity of the family’s finances.”

The company is known as WJC LLC. The first set of initials stand for William Jefferson Clinton, the second for limited liability company. As the Small Business Administration website explains, an LLC “is a hybrid type of legal structure that provides the limited liability features of a corporation and the tax efficiencies and operational flexibility of a partnership.” An LLC doesn’t pay corporate income tax but rather passes profits along to its “members” (owners) as personal income.

There’s no evidence the Clintons failed to comply with the applicable laws in this matter. “Under federal ethics disclosure rules, declared candidates do not have to report assets worth less than $1,000,” the AP reports. Since WJC LLC is a “shell” or “pass-through,” which holds no assets, it falls short of that threshold by roughly a grand. The rules require Mrs. Clinton only “to identify the source of her spouse’s income and confirm that he received more than $1,000,” which she did in at least one case that “surfaced in emails from Bill Clinton’s aides to the [State] department’s ethics officials.”

But because there is no obligation to disclose how much money the spouse earned, “the precise amounts of Bill Clinton’s earned income from consulting have not been disclosed, and it’s not known how much was routed through WJC, LLC.” More is known about the Clintons’ extravagant speaking fees—“as much as $50 million” for him during her tenure as secretary of state—which went directly to them or the Clinton Foundation.

But that’s not all! When Hillary was Secretary of State, her department approved arms deals (SALE OF WEAPONS) to parties who made donations to her Clinton Foundation.

Amazing:

Graver for the Clintons is a report yesterday from David Sirota and Andrew Perez of the International Business Times. (Sirota is the left-wing author who enjoyed a dubious 15 minutes of fame in 2013 when he penned a piece for Salon titled “Let’s Hope the Boston Marathon Bomber Is a White American.”)

Sirota and Perez report that they found “dozens of arms sales,” worth $165 billion, that were “approved by Hillary Clinton’s State Department” and “placed weapons in the hands of governments that had also donated money to the Clinton family philanthropic empire.” In some cases, the sellers of the armaments were also Clinton Foundation donors. The report opens with this example:

Even by the standards of arms deals between the United States and Saudi Arabia, this one was enormous. A consortium of American defense contractors led by Boeing would deliver $29 billion worth of advanced fighter jets to the United States’ oil-rich ally in the Middle East.

Israeli officials were agitated, reportedly complaining to the Obama administration that this substantial enhancement to Saudi air power risked disrupting the region’s fragile balance of power. The deal appeared to collide with the State Department’s documented concerns about the repressive policies of the Saudi royal family.

But now, in late 2011, Hillary Clinton’s State Department was formally clearing the sale, asserting that it was in the national interest. At a press conference in Washington to announce the department’s approval, an assistant secretary of state, Andrew Shapiro, declared that the deal had been “a top priority” for [Mrs.] Clinton personally. Shapiro, a longtime aide to Clinton since her Senate days, added that the “U.S. Air Force and U.S. Army have excellent relationships in Saudi Arabia.”

These were not the only relationships bridging leaders of the two nations. In the years before Hillary Clinton became secretary of state, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia contributed at least $10 million to the Clinton Foundation, the philanthropic enterprise she has overseen with her husband, former president Bill Clinton. Just two months before the deal was finalized, Boeing—the defense contractor that manufactures one of the fighter jets the Saudis were especially keen to acquire, the F-15—contributed $900,000 to the Clinton Foundation, according to a company press release.

Sirota and Perez also cite fishy-looking speaking fees to Mr. Clinton, such as $175,000 from the Kuwait America Foundation “paid in the same time frame as a series of deals Hillary Clinton’s State Department was approving between the Kuwaiti government and Boeing.”

And now, there are connections between the Clinton Foundation and the FIFA scandal that’s now in the news.

The radically leftist Daily Beast:

Both Bill Clinton and his family’s charity have been tied to soccer’s governing body, as well as Qatar’s disastrous World Cup bid.

And just like that, another Clinton Foundation donor is in the news.

The Clinton global charity has received between $50,000 and $100,000 from soccer’s governing body and has partnered with the Fédération Internationale de Football Association on several occasions, according to donor listings on the foundation’s website.

Several top FIFA executives were arrested Wednesday in Zurich and face corruption charges stretching back two decades, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Involvement with the embattled body extends beyond the foundation to Bill Clinton himself. The former president was an honorary chairman of the bid committee put together to promote the United States as a possible host nation for the 2018 or 2022 World Cup.

When the U.S. lost the 2022 bid to Qatar, Clinton was rumored to be so upset he shattered a mirror.

But apparently Qatar tried to make it up to him.

The Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee, partnering with the State of Qatar, “committed to utilizing its research and development for sustainable infrastructure at the 2022 FIFA World Cup to improve food security in Qatar, the Middle East, and other arid and water-stressed regions throughout the world,” according to the Clinton Foundation website.

The cost of the two-year project is not listed on the Clinton Foundation website, but the Qatar 2022 committee gave the foundation between $250,000 and $500,000 in 2014 and the State of Qatar gave between $1 million and $5 million in previous, unspecified years.

FIFA, which has never been a bastion of ethics, was heavily criticized for awarding the 2018 and 2022 World Cup to Russia and Qatar, respectively, in part because of their abysmal human-rights records.

The Guardian reported in 2013 about “appalling labor abuses,” including possible forced labor and worker death on Qatar’s World Cup infrastructure projects. It is also considered to be too hot to play soccer in Qatar in the summer.

Seriously, is Hillary Clinton the kind of person we want to sent to the White House?

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In one day, Bill and Hillary Clinton got over $1 million for FOUR speeches

Wow, “dead broke” indeed.

The Weekly Standard reports:

Disclosure forms filed with the Federal Election Commission by Hillary Clinton provide fascinating details of the remarkable money-making machine that is the once-and-possibly-future first couple. Between January 2014 and the filing of the forms on May 15, 2015 (up to and including a speech by Bill Clinton to the American Institute of Architects the day before the filing), the Clintons made about $30 million, approximately $25 million from speeches alone.

Both of the Clintons have given speeches regularly in the 16-month period covered in the filing with rarely more than a few weeks off in between engagements. Often events are crowded together during a period of several days, sometimes with more than one speech on the same day. On a single day last October, Bill and Hillary delivered a total of four speeches, taking home over $1 million. Those four speeches fell in the middle of a three-day blitz that brought in a total of $1,511,000. (Mrs. Clinton edged out her husband $786,000 to $725,000.)

[…]Although the audiences for the Clintons vary widely, the actual content and duration of the speeches is not always revealed. However, a YouTube video of Bill Clinton’s recent speech to the American Institute of Architects, apparently recorded by an attendee, shows that the $250,000 fee paid to Mr. Clinton purchased the group a 23 minute speech, an hourly rate of about $652,000.

On a per-hour basis, she makes more than all of the CEOs of the largest companies.

Look:

$300,000 an hour for a speech
$300,000 an hour for a speech

That’s from this astounding article from the Washington Examiner.

Excerpt:

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is drawing a populist bead on lavish Wall Street pay packages as she revs up her march to the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, but in some respects the fat-per-speech fee she can charge puts her far ahead of the top 10 highest-paid American CEOs.

“I think it’s fair to say that if you look across the country, the deck is stacked in favor of those already at the top. There’s something wrong when CEOs make 300 times more than the American worker…,” Clinton said during her first campaign swing last week at an Iowa community college.

Bashing Wall Streeters is part of Clinton’s strategy of remaking her image to appear more sympathetic to middle class voters, while also appealing to left-wing Democrats who are attracted to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and the even more radical supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont socialist who talks of seeking the 2016 nomination.

Let’s compare the per-hour rate of pay for Hillary compared to the top American CEOs:

On that basis, the CEOs are pikers compared to an hour of Clinton speaking for $300,000. Hammergren, for example, makes only $63,076 for the same hour of labor. Clothing magnate Ralph Lauren, the second best-paid CEO on the Forbes list receives $32,067. Vornado Realty’s Michael Fasitelli, the third-place CEO, gets $30,961 per hour.

And this is what her speeches are like:

Is that worth millions of dollars? When you put this together with the secretive Clinton Foundation, it looks like something else might be going on here.

The radically leftist New York Times is saying that the “dead broke” Clintons made $30 million in a 16-month period.

Astonishing:

Hillary Rodham Clinton and her husband made at least $30 million over the last 16 months, mainly from giving paid speeches to corporations, banks and other organizations, according to financial disclosure forms filed with federal elections officials on Friday.

The sum, which makes Mrs. Clinton among the wealthiest of the 2016 presidential candidates, could create challenges for the former secretary of state as she tries to cast herself as a champion of everyday Americans in an era of income inequality.

The $25 million in speaking fees since the beginning of last year continue a lucrative trend for the Clintons: They have now earned more than $125 million on the circuit since leaving the White House in 2001.

In addition, the report shows, Mrs. Clinton reported income exceeding $5 million from her memoir of her time as secretary of state, “Hard Choices.”

Now, she wants to save us from the “1%”. She’s the 1% of the 1% of the 1%.

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Canada repeals Section 13 law that criminalized politically incorrect speech

Canada Political Map
Canada Political Map

Sun News reports on some good news up north.

Excerpt:

An Alberta MP has succeeded in his bid to repeal a section of the Canadian Human Rights Act long seen by free-speech advocates as a tool to squelch dissenting opinions.

Conservative MP Brian Storseth saw the Senate give third and final reading late Wednesday to his Bill C-304 which repeals Section 13 of the Human Rights Act, an act that had been used to, among other things, attack the writings of Sun News Network’s Ezra Levant and Maclean’s columnist Mark Steyn.

Section 13 ostensibly banned hate speech on the Internet and left it up to the quasi-judicial human rights commission to determine what qualified as “hate speech.” But, unlike a court, there was no presumption of innocence of those accused of hate speech by the commission. Instead, those accused had to prove their innocence.

With elimination of Section 13, producing and disseminating hate speech continues to be a Criminal Code violation but police and the courts will adjudicate rather than human rights tribunals.

Storseth drafted his bill in 2011 and enjoyed support from the highest levels in cabinet.

“Our government believes Section 13 is not an appropriate or effective means for combating hate propaganda,” Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said in late 2011. “We believe the Criminal Code is the best vehicle to prosecute these crimes.”

Last summer, Storseth’s bill cleared the House of Commons in a free vote and, now that it’s through the Senate, it will get royal assent and Section 13 should soon disappear.

Brian Lilley comments: (H/T Blazing Cat Fur)

To put it bluntly, the means you can’t take someone through the federal human rights apparatus over hurt feelings via a blog post or a Facebook comment.

Now the bill is passed and will become law but like many acts of Parliament it will not come into force for a year.

Still after a long hard battle to restore free speech in Canada, this is a victory.

Canada just became a little more free. Congratulations to Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party of Canada for undoing a harmful policy enacted by the radical left.